Shiny Brite Christmas Ornaments

Some believe the true magic of the holiday season is found in the family Christmas tree, which can create as many memories as the gifts found underneath it.

Shiny Brite ornaments and tree toppers. Photo courtesy Getty Images.

Ornaments that decorated yesterday’s trees continue to create holiday traditions today, and for many, this tradition includes glass orbs hanging from branches in bright, shiny colors and sparkly patterns. Chances are, the ones used in your family for years are by Shiny Brite, a brand created by German-American immigrant Max Eckardt in 1937.

A market long dominated by German companies, Shiny Brite produced the most popular Christmas tree ornaments in the United States throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Eckardt established Shiny Brite ornaments in New York City, working with Corning Glass Works to mass-produce glass Christmas ornaments. By 1940, Corning was producing about 300,000 unadorned ornaments per day, sending the clear glass balls to outside artists, including those at Eckardt’s factories, for hand decoration. The ornaments were lined with silver nitrate, run through a lacquer bath, decorated by Eckardt’s employees, and then packaged in brown cardboard boxes. The inspiration for the Shiny Brite name came from the fact that the insides of the ornaments were coated with silver nitrate so they would stay shiny and “brite” season after season.

According to a December 1940 LIFE magazine article, Corning expected to produce 40 million ornaments by the end of that year and supply 100 percent of the domestic market for ornaments.

Originally, Shiny Brite ornaments were a simple silver, but eventually, Eckardt produced them in a large variety of colors: classic red (the most popular ornament color in the 1940s), green, gold, pink, and blue, both in solids and stripes. They were also offered in a variety of shapes besides balls, including Christmas tree tops, bells, icicles, teardrops, trees, finials, pinecones, and Japanese lanterns and reflectors. Some were also decorated with mica “snow.”

Eckardt died in late 1961, and shortly thereafter, Shiny Brite’s popularity began to fade, largely because of the emergence of plastic ornaments. In the late 1990s, designer Christopher Radko revived the Shiny Brite name and, in 2001, began selling reproductions of the originals.

Coated with a wistful affection for the past, vintage Shiny Brite ornaments remain popular with collectors and mid-century design fans.